John 9:30-39 is the account of Jesus’ final appeal to the Jewish rulers. He had spoken of Himself as the good shepherd who knows His sheep, calls them by name, and lays down His life for them. At the conclusion of His conversation with them He said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:31). It was at this point that the Jews wanted to stone him. When Jesus said He had shown many good works to them and asked which one of those works they were stoning him for, they answered that it was not for a good work they wanted to stone him, but because of blasphemy: He was a man and claimed to be God. Jesus responded to their words, saying that the scriptures said, “I said ye are gods” (Psalm 8:6). Then He asked why He blasphemed because He had said the Father had sanctified Him and sent him into the world. He said, “If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not, but if I do them, though you believe me not, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10:37-38). The Jews looked once more to take Him, but He eluded their efforts. After this, Jesus hid Himself from the rulers because it was evident there were no circumstances under which the bulk of them would believe in Him. But, it was not yet His “hour”: He still had teaching to do both to His apostles and others who had a sincere desire to hear Him.
Jesus had made a valid appeal. In essence, “if I don’t do my Father’s work, don’t believe me. But if I do them, believe the works.” That was reasonable enough. The genuine miracles Jesus worked placed these rulers in a very awkward, compromising situation. They could not deny His miracles but trying to explain how one could work genuine miracles but who was, in their estimation, a fake and a fraud, placed them in a contradictory position. They claimed that Jesus worked by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons, but the folly of that argument became apparent: that would place Satan divided against himself. Then they claimed, “He has a demon” and once again individuals asked, “Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” Then they said, “He is a sinner” and once more was told, “We know God heareth not sinners … If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They knew Jesus worked genuine miracles, but they would not acknowledge the obvious conclusion to that. They truly had no “cloak for their sin” (John 15:22, KJV).
Jesus assured those that who questioned Him when He had healed a lame man on the Sabbath Day by the pool of Bethesda, that the works He did were works His Father showed Him, and He assured them that God would show Him greater works than those “that they might marvel” (John 5:20). And so He did.
Following the healing of the lame man, the next recorded miracle (in Jerusalem) was the giving sight to a man who had been born blind. To that blind man who now saw, the rulers said, “Give glory to God, this man is a sinner” (John 9:24). Then they said, “We know God spoke unto Moses, but as to this man, we know not whence he is …” But the blind man was not so easily dissuaded. He responded, “Whether he is a sinner, I know not. One thing I know, I was blind and now I see.” Then he concluded, “If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.” They were totally inconsistent. They accepted Moses on the basis of his miracles, but they rejected Jesus despite the fact that He was a miracle worker just as Moses! When they were faced with explaining the raising of Lazarus from the dead, they were forced to acknowledge, “What do we? This man worketh many signs.”
Still, they did not believe: they intensified their efforts to kill him. When they had succeeded at that, an even greater miracle occurred: He was raised from the dead! The rulers had asked Pilate for a guard for Jesus’ tomb to prevent His disciples from coming and stealing His body, but angels came, rolled away the stone from His tomb, and Jesus walked out of that tomb. The guards informed the rulers of these things and then the rulers, rather than confessing that Jesus was the Son of God, gave the guards money to lie and say, “His disciples came by night while we were asleep and stole away His body” (Matthew 28:1-4; 11-15). They marveled at His miracles just as Jesus said they would, but they would not confess Him to be the Son of God which those miracles proved.
Man is a free moral agent. He makes his own choices and God does not intervene with the choices man makes. Nothing proves that more clearly than the extreme efforts Jesus made to His nation and their rulers that He was (as Nicodemus claimed him to be) “a teacher come from God.” Jesus wants all men to believe that He is whom He claims to be, and to find that abundant life which is in Him — but there is a limit to which Jesus will go. Jesus would not compel those rulers to confess Him. We have the same proof Jesus gave His nation and the rulers of that nation. But if, in the face overwhelming evidence that Jesus is God, man still rejects Jesus and His claims, Jesus will be saddened and grieved in His heart, but He will not force man to believe. He would not make the rulers believe in Him then. He won’t make either me or you believe in Him now. The evidence is there. Will we be honest and accept the truth those miracles attested to or will we, like the Jewish rulers, refuse to believe in Him despite overwhelming evidence that He is the Son of God?
Jim McDonald